Giant Food Store

The Giant Food store in the Rotunda shopping center in North Baltimore reopened yesterday after being closed Friday by city health inspectors because of a pest infestation. Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, the city's health commissioner, said Giant had 40 to 50 workers cleaning and sanitizing the store, as well as patching holes. The store reopened just before 1 a.m. yesterday after a health inspector reviewed the facility. Inspectors were called to the store in the 700 block of W. 40th St. on Friday in response to complaints.

Flu shots are back -- at Giant Food and other area retailers. Giant is now offering the vaccinations at all in-store pharmacies with no appointment needed. Shoppers with a Giant Pharmacy Prescription Savings Card get $10 off the regular price, and most major insurance plans are accepted. And while supplies last, all customers who get a flu shot will also get a coupon book worth more than $40 in savings. Flu shots are also available at Rite Aid and Walmart. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a yearly flu vaccine for everyone 6 months or older, especially those at high risk.

WASHINGTON - President Bush declared yesterday that U.S. efforts to defeat terrorism are paying dividends, pointing to millions of dollars in frozen assets and hundreds of arrests around the world as proof. The president has urged patience in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, but said there are signs of progress in the criminal case and on diplomatic and financial fronts. "The evil-doers like to hit and then they try to hide," Bush told employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which helped coordinate rescue efforts after the attacks.

Giant Food is expanding store pick-up sites for consumers who shop through online grocer Peapod. The Landover-based supermarket chain said this week it has added supermarkets in Bowie and in Sterling, Va., to a growing list of stores where Peapod orders can be delivered. In just the last four months, Giant has added pick-up locations to 20 stores in Maryland and Virginia. The retailer also recently opened a pick-up and fuel station facility in Chevy Chase. "We're very excited to be working with our sister grocer Peapod so closely to execute our Giant Pick-up program - an excellent convenience for customers in the mid-Atlantic region," Anthony Hucker, Giant's president, said in the announcement.

A special police officer at a Giant food store arrested an Annapolis man Monday afternoon for allegedly shoplifting cigars and audio tapes, county police said.Officer Larry Graves, 26, saw a man hide four packs of Memorex tapes and three boxes of El Producto cigars in his jacket and try to leave the store without paying. Mr. Graves stopped and arrested him, police said.Walter Leroy Bailey, 32, of the 200 block of Admiral Drive, was charged with misdemeanor theft, police said.

An armed man robbed a woman Monday evening outside a Giant food store in Crofton two hours after a similarly dressed man using similar tactics robbed a man outside a Box and Save store in Glen Burnie, county police said.The two attacks might be related, police said. "There certainly are a lot of similarities," police spokeswoman Carol Frye said.In each, the robber, wearing a plaid jacket or flannel shirt, pulled a car into the parking space next to the victim, showed a gun and demanded money, police said.

Two Pimlico women were arrested Tuesday night after the attempted shoplifting of two cartons of cigarettes from the Giant food store in the Cromwell Field Shopping Center, county police said.Charles Johnson, a special police officer at the store in the 7300 block of Baltimore-Annapolis Blvd., told county police that one of the women gave two cartons of cigarettes, worth $35.18, to the second woman, who put them into a plastic bag. Both women then tried to leave the store without paying for the cigarettes, police said.

For the past year, Maisy Ota has traveled several miles from her home in Clary's Forest to shop in Wilde Lake, Oakland Mills, Dorsey's Search and Catonsville.Now she is minutes away from Columbia's newest village center in Hickory Ridge."This is just wonderful," said the 80-year-old woman during Wednesday's grand opening, which featured jazz bands from Atholton and Hammond high schools, puppet shows and face painters."It's much more convenient," said Hickory Ridge resident Linda Brightfield, echoing the sentiments of many shoppers at the new center.

A Columbia man accused of wielding an AK-47 assault rifle during a 1999 grocery store robbery was indicted yesterday on federal charges almost a year after a related state case against him was thrown out because of insufficient evidence. Armistead D. Myers, 27, was charged in U.S. District Court in Baltimore with using a firearm in a violent crime and conspiracy in connection with a string of Howard County robberies dating to December 1997. A conviction on the weapons charge carries a possible sentence of life in prison.

A 31-year-old Hagerstown man was held in lieu of $15,000 bond by a District Court commissioner Friday on charges that he stole 13 checks and cashed 10 of them in area food stores.Patrick Thomas Cook, of the 18600 block of Rocksbury Road, was arrested Friday. The forged checks, which totaled $2,114, were cashed in March 1993, police said.Mr. Cook faces 32 charges of forgery, theft and uttering false documents by cashing the checks within a 17-day period.The first check was cashed at the Giant Food store in Westminster on March 7, according to documents filed in District Court.

Baltimore County police on Wednesday asked for the public's help in a 15-year-old unsolved murder case. On March 2, 1996, Joann "Jody" LeCornu, 23, of Cedarcroft, was shot in the back from the rear of her car in the Drumcastle Shopping Center on York Road in the Towson area. She then drove across York Road to the York Road Plaza, which is now the Giant York Road Plaza. She was found dead there in her white Honda Civic by police after workers at the Giant food store called police at 3:41 a.m. to report the sound of gunshots, police told The Sun at the time.

Fans can get letters delivered to the Baltimore Ravens by dropping them off in purple mailboxes at local Giant Food grocery stores, a promotion kicking off Tuesday as the football team prepares to head into the playoffs. Letters in the "Baltimore Ravens Postal Service" boxes will be taken to the team's training facility in Owings Mills every Wednesday night that the Ravens are in the playoffs and posted in the cafeteria, the team said Monday. Details and participating Giant locations are at BaltimoreRavens.com/Playoffs . jhopkins@baltsun.com twitter.com/RealEstateWonk

Baltimore County Police are asking for the public's help identifying a suspect who robbed the PNC Bank inside the Giant Food, in the 8100 block of Loch Raven Blvd., on June 4. Police said that on Saturday, at about 1:23 p.m., the suspect entered the store and passed a note to the teller announcing a robbery. He fled the location with an undisclosed amount of money. Despite a search of the area, the suspect was not located. The suspect is described as a black male, 25 to 35 years old, 5'6" to 5'11" tall, and between 150 and 175 pounds.

The Giant Food store in the Rotunda shopping center in North Baltimore reopened yesterday after being closed Friday by city health inspectors because of a pest infestation. Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, the city's health commissioner, said Giant had 40 to 50 workers cleaning and sanitizing the store, as well as patching holes. The store reopened just before 1 a.m. yesterday after a health inspector reviewed the facility. Inspectors were called to the store in the 700 block of W. 40th St. on Friday in response to complaints.

Benny L. Fields, a Giant Foods store detective, died of congestive heart failure Tuesday at Good Samaritan Hospital. The Overlea resident was 66. Born in Norton, Va., he moved to Baltimore with his parents and resided on Linden Avenue. He was a 1957 graduate of Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School, where he played football. He worked in personal security and was a bodyguard to Colts owner Robert Irsay and sportscaster Howard Cosell when he covered the 1979 World Series. Mr. Fields was a Giant Food store detective for 32 years.

A New York developer is seeking to bring a huge upscale supermarket to an industrial site in east Columbia despite opposition from Howard County planners and the Rouse Co., which fears it could hurt Columbia's village concept. County and Rouse officials praised Wegmans as a first-rate store but said after a hearing in Ellicott City yesterday that putting a 100,000-square-foot "hyper-grocery" on industrially zoned land would hurt the planned town and reduce the amount of land available for manufacturing.

A Baltimore woman was arrested on a theft charge Monday after a $14 pair of boots was stolen from a Glen Burnie shoe store, police said.Just before 5:30 p.m. Monday, officers received a call that a woman had walked out of the Payless Shoe Source in the Cromwell Fields Shopping Center without paying for a pair of shoes, police said. A security guard for the shopping center followed the woman into a Giant food store and waited for police.When officers arrived, the guard pointed out the woman.

Benny L. Fields, a Giant Foods store detective, died of congestive heart failure Tuesday at Good Samaritan Hospital. The Overlea resident was 66. Born in Norton, Va., he moved to Baltimore with his parents and resided on Linden Avenue. He was a 1957 graduate of Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School, where he played football. He worked in personal security and was a bodyguard to Colts owner Robert Irsay and sportscaster Howard Cosell when he covered the 1979 World Series. Mr. Fields was a Giant Food store detective for 32 years.

Giant Food, which like most grocery chains has been building larger stores and adding services to keep customers longer, is trying a new feature aimed at convenience in the Columbia store scheduled to open this week -- a drive-through pharmacy. The store, to open Thursday at the site of the former Palace 9 movie theater, is the first of the chain's 195 locations in the mid-Atlantic region to have a drive-through pharmacy, and Giant is the first major grocer in the region to incorporate the feature in its store design.

More than nine months after Food Lion announced it would take up operations in the Oakland Mills Village Center, replacing a Metro Food Market that has been a dark hole in the center for two years, the grocer has yet to begin renovations. Plans for the 42,000- square-foot store were stalled because of problems with the lease, a Food Lion spokeswoman said, and although the company expects the store to open next year, the spokeswoman said she did not know when renovations to the building could begin.